ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2026
Jan 2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
April 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
On moving fast and breaking things
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
So much of what is happening in federal nuclear policy these days seems driven by a common approach popularized in the technology sector. Silicon Valley calls it “move fast and break things,” a phrase originally associated with Facebook’s early culture under Mark Zuckerberg. The idea emerged in the early 2000s as software companies discovered that rapid iteration, frequent experimentation, and a willingness to tolerate failure could dramatically accelerate innovation. This philosophy helped drive the growth of the social media, smartphones, cloud computing, and digital platforms that now underpin modern economic and social life.
Today, that mindset is also influencing federal nuclear policy. The Trump administration views accelerated nuclear deployment as part of a broader competition with China for technological and AI leadership. In that context, it seems willing to accept greater operational risk in pursuit of strategic advantage and long-term economic and security objectives.
M. J. Fleming, L. W. G. Morgan, E. Shwageraus
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 183 | Number 2 | June 2016 | Pages 173-184
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE15-55
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Modeling of nuclide densities as a function of time within magnetic confinement fusion devices such as the JET, ITER, and proposed DEMO tokamaks is performed using Monte Carlo transport codes coupled with a Bateman equation solver. The generation of reaction rates occurs through either pointwise interpolation of energy-dependent tracked particle data with nuclear data or multigroup (MG) convolution of binned fluxes with binned cross sections. The MG approach benefits from decreased computational expense and data portability, but introduces errors through effects such as self-shielding. Depending on the MG structure and nuclear data used, this method can introduce unacceptable errors without warning. We present a MG optimization method that utilizes a modified particle swarm algorithm to generate seed solutions for a nonstochastic string-tightening algorithm. This procedure has been used with a semihomogenized one-dimensional DEMO-like reactor design to produce an optimized energy group structure for tritium breeding. In this example, the errors introduced by the Vitamin-J 175 MG are reduced by two orders of magnitude in the optimized group structure.